By continuing to use this site, you agree to our use of cookies. Find out more

Kits United Kingdom - Post WW2/Cold War

Published 20-Jun-2017

Revell 1/48 MiG-25 RBT ‘Foxbat B’

By Martyn Chorlton

Thanks to Revell for this impressive kit in a 'big' box!

Revell 1/48 MiG-25 RBT ‘Foxbat B’

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 was one of those Cold War icons which were created in the 1950s in response to the increasingly pacier American bombers being developed at the time, including the Mach 3 B-70 Valkyrie. While the ill-fated B-70 never went into production the impressive stainless steel MiG-25 did in 1964 and over the next two decades, 1,186 of them had been built. Although originally designed as an interceptor, of which many in this guise were built and served, the MiG-25 proved to be the perfect stable, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft which the Soviets desperately needed to keep an eye on the USA and its forces.

The variant presented by Revell here is the ‘Foxbat B’ or more specifically the MiG-25RBT which was an improved reconnaissance bomber fitted with Tangaz Elint equipment.

New from Revell in 2017 is this rebox of the ICM kit which only came out last year. Revell have made no attempt to add new parts and the only changes is the replacement of their traditional A4, full colour instruction guide and a new Revell-printed decal sheet which was on two separate sheets in the ICM kit. The box and art work has obviously changed, the latter depicting the MiG-25 coming towards the viewer and an SR-71 scuttling away in the background. With regard to the box, which I don’t usually comment upon, it is huge! The sprues measure 38cm x 22cm while the box is a whopping 50cm x 35cm; there is so much space inside the box Revell have had to insert an open-ended cardboard guide to stop the parts from rattling around! I’ve seen this a lot with model kits and Revell is one of the worst culprits. I initially thought this was a 1/32 kit (which would be amazing).

Anyway, back to the kit which is one of the more straight forward aircraft builds I have tackled, although the traditional full fuselage halves approach is changed here for the better I think. The fuselage is made up of a forward cockpit section, main rear fuselage section and the nose cone which is just about how the real thing was put together. As mentioned earlier, Revell’s instructions are great and clear and the quality of the decals are a marginal improvement on the ICM original. Other than that all credit should still go to ICM for producing a solid rendition of top quality Cold War warrior. One thing, this is the RBT variant, the ‘B’ standing for bomber and as such you would have expected some ordnance. However, the kit is provided with a single large long-range fuel tank which is a bit of shame. Apart from that, if you haven’t got the ICM original get yourself one of these; the box will be pretty easy to spot in your local model shop!

Revell model kits are available from all good toy and model retailers. For details visit www.revell.de/en.